Control
by ViolaCoye
Summary: (CSI:Miami HC) Written for the Kill Zone challenge, Cal-centric


Control  
  
ViolaCoye  
  
Disclaimer: Not mine. ::runs off to sulk::  
  
Rating: Pg-Pg13 I think. Small rape reference  
  
Summary: {CSI: MIAMI} Post-ep to Kill Zone, Calleigh centric (H/C)  
  
A/N: Written for H/C Yahoo! Groups Kill Zone challenge. This is entirely different from anything I've written before, but hey, the muse says write, I grumble, she says Write, I hiss, She says WRITE!! I tend to run to the typewriter.  
  
Not Beta-ed all mistakes are mine.  
  
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Bang!  
  
The sound of bullets flying at the target was strangely comforting to Calleigh. Her high school counselor had said that it was because of the feeling of control the gun gave her, control that she had in no other aspect of her life. That's what the counselor said, but Calleigh didn't agree. Calleigh thought that the counselor was crap and she very rarely showed up at the allotted time, preferring instead to hang outside with her friends checking out boys than sitting across from Mr. Hathaway in a room that smelled like chalk.  
  
Bang!  
  
She used to argue with her younger brother about what sound a gun made. He said Bang, because that's what Marvel said. She thought it was more of a pow, but even that was grossly off. A gun didn't have a sound that could be put down in words. You just heard it and knew, knew that it was a gun, capable of taking a life, giving the holder the power of God.  
  
Bang!  
  
Christopher Harwood. The name made her shudder. The evil exhibited in the world was too much to comprehend. The worst thought was that some of the worst people in the world were not the Hitlers or Harwoods. They were not easily recognizable, but beneath their calm façade the evil within grew and festered, eating them alive from the inside out, scarabs of hatred.  
  
Bang!  
  
The first time she stepped foot in a college classroom her mind had been set on understanding people. Not in the crappy way of Mr. Hathaway, but really understanding why they did what they did. Why they would kill a stranger, a best friend, a spouse. Why they would hit their daughter, rape their daughter, God Melina. She had entered to discover why, she left knowing how. How to catch them and put them away. She left the why behind.  
  
Bang!  
  
Melina Taylor had been her best friend throughout school. They had known each other from diapers and were sole mates the first time they met. Melina was popular, outgoing and beautiful. On Friday she could be found at the movies with a new beau. She had her pick of any guy in school. Calleigh, by contrast, was in that small group of kids who didn't know where she belonged. Some days she was popular, her looks attributed to that, some days she was an outcast. Her Friday nights were spent in the woods outside of town, shooting Campbell's cans with her shotgun. Life was normal until February of their junior year when Melina did not show up for school for a week. Her body was found behind her house, bullet through the head. A week later Calleigh received a letter explaining why. Her father quickly carried of his duties as sheriff. Mr. Taylor died in prison the next year.  
  
Bang!  
  
The cartridge was spent. There were no more bullets. No more control. Maybe Mr. Hathaway had been right. Control. It seemed as though it and her name were all she had left. She had lost control of her anger when she was five and punched the boy who called her little brother ugly. She lost control of her body when she was seven and her father's fist first left a bruise on it. She lost control of her home the day after senior prom when she walked out of the house, and out of Dayton, to head to New Orleans and away from Sergeant Kenneth Riley, bigot and drunkard. She lost control of her body three weeks later when she first experience all of the man she left Dayton for, the man who left four months afterward to head for his own grown up experience. She gained control of her name when she changed it from Riley to Duquesne. She lost control of her career the day her supervisor called her to his, small, office and told her to pack, she was off to Miami. She lost control of her heart when she first walked into the Miami-Dade Crime Lab and was greeted by a man with red hair and sunglasses who introduced himself as "Horatio Caine, but call me Horatio."  
  
She had replied with, "How about Handsome?"  
  
Click!  
  
No sound to be argued over this time, a click was a click no doubt about it. The sorrow she always felt removing her ear protectors and goggles is quickly squelched and suppressed as she walks towards the front of the shooting range.  
  
The drive from CSI to her apartment was short, 20 minutes on a bad day. The overused clichés writers use, time seemed like an eternity, did not apply to her. She was in no rush to leave, no hurry to get home. Her apartment had everything, a good super, looks, location, but she got it for a steal when she first moved to Miami because of its lack of an elevator. Calleigh had never minded the climb to her fourth story apartment after her furniture had made the ascent.  
  
Her key turned the lock and she entered, stepping over a piece of yellow notebook paper lying on the floor. You have a package. Call and I'll bring it up. Freddie.  
  
She called twenty minutes later, exchanging pleasantries and denying his request for dinner. The package he brought up the four flights was white cardboard and the shape and size of a letterbox. Once Freddie had left her alone on the couch she opened the box to find another. This box was dark blue and velvet, a long necklace box. Attached to the outside was a note written on plain white paper.  
  
Would you like to have dinner with me on the 20th? Horatio  
  
Calleigh knew the choice was hers. She opened the jewelry box to find a small, black, equal armed cross. It hung delicately on a black silk cord and was made of small black stones on a silver background. At the end of each arm of the cross was a pink stone which caught the light from the window and through it up against the wall with a pinkish haze.  
  
Calleigh stared, caught up in the time that must have been spent picking this out, the thought he had put into it. She slipped it on her neck as carefully as she had at the age of six when her mother had allowed Calleigh to try on her diamond necklace. She dug into her pocket the small cell phone that always resided there. She had a call to make. 


End file.
